Surgeons are performing more and more spinal surgeries to correct different spinal defects in the hopes of reducing pain and restoring normal or close to normal movement. One area of particular interest lies in the restoration of normal spacing between adjacent vertebral bodies. Whether due to the degeneration of the intervertebral disc over time or because of an injury, a decrease in spacing between vertebral bodies can cause a myriad of problems for a patient, the least of which is pain resulting from the pinching of nerves between the bodies. Correcting this problem is often very important to returning a patient to his or her normal level of activity and/or managing the pain associated with a degenerative spinal problem.
Over the years, there have been many different techniques employed in restoring the normal disc space. For instance, solid fusion devices have been implanted in many patients in the hopes of both restoring normal disc spacing and preventing further degeneration of the space by fusing the vertebral bodies to one another. Recently, there has been a trend to both restore the disc spacing and allow natural movement of the adjacent vertebral bodies with respect to one another. Nonetheless, there exist certain extreme cases of degradation of the disc space which require extreme measures in order to restore the natural spacing.
Often, the decrease in spacing will be so drastic that some amount of distraction of the adjacent vertebral bodies will be required. Although this distraction is sometimes achieved through the use of various tools, the desire for faster and more efficient surgical techniques favors the elimination of superfluous surgical steps. Thus, there exists a need for an intervertebral implant which is implantable in an unexpanded state and easily expandable to restore the disc space, thereby negating the need for additional tools and the additional surgical steps of using them.